


i'm off the deep end watch as I dive in

by tobeconvincedoflove



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Adam Parrish is Bad at Feelings, Eating Disorders, Gen, Hospitals, Hurt/Comfort, Ronan Lynch Has Feelings, Sleep Deprivation, adam has an unhealthy relationship with food and shit falls apart, adam is in a group home he's got guardians and foster siblings and shit, but also ronan is great, okay so buckle up for some warnings, this is the adam parrish learns to deal with things, when you have also been at rock bottom you know what to do
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-18
Updated: 2018-10-22
Packaged: 2019-08-04 03:19:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 16,435
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16338833
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tobeconvincedoflove/pseuds/tobeconvincedoflove
Summary: Time stops being real. Even when Adam isn’t actively trying to stay awake, sleep is eluding him. Or, it does sometimes. He can stare at the ceiling, restless energy driving him to fold and unfold his shirts or pick at his scabs until the sun rises again, one night and then the next he would sleep through his alarm if someone didn’t shake him awake.He can’t remember the last time he was hungry.(title from Shallows/A Star is Born)





	1. in the bad times i fear myself

**Author's Note:**

> Hello I am not dead.
> 
> TW: the serious one is eating disorders. It gets pretty detailed into the downward spiral/immediate consequence of it, so please stay safe friends. There aren't a lot of references to the canonical child abuse, but there are also some sleep issues. Stay safe friends!

“You looked dead in World History. Up late doing the calc problem set?” Gansey asks as he plops down next to Adam in the grass. It’s a warm day, and Ronan has even graced them all with his presence. 

“Nah, man. I finished that a few days ago,” Adam answers, plopping a grape into his mouth. “Honestly, I wish there were more.”

“What do you mean? He gave us an assload,” Ronan says, like he’s actually looked at the homework. 

“I’m bored out of my fucking mind,” Adam admits. “There’s like… not enough shit to do.”

“Then why are you still so fucking exhausted, Parrish?” Ronan’s voice isn’t even harsh. It’s just confused. “If you’re not staying up late writing essays and shit.” 

Adam just gives him a blank look. 

“I think what Ronan means,” Gansey says, full-on dad mode, “is that without the early factory shifts or late hours at the gas station, if you don’t have schoolwork…” but he doesn’t finish the sentence.

“Oh, I mean I’ve been going to sleep at the same time. It’s just that it’s weird. Like I’ll do all my chores and my homework and then rewrite it neater and I still have time to read ahead and clean my room and shit.” 

“No offense, man, but have you heard of TV? Or, like, sleep?” Ronan asks. “Your fucking guardians or whatever, they have a TV, right?”

“I mean, yeah. But it’s late and they go to bed,” Adam says. “I don’t want to wake them up. And I think there’s like a lights-out or something.”

“Then go to sleep?” Gansey suggests. “Or is it an insomnia thing? Melatonin is wonderful, you know.” 

Oh no. Adam can see the gears turning in Gansey’s head. It’s a well-established fact that Ronan and Gansey don’t really sleep, not by choice, but it’s also been well-established that Adam passes out as soon as his head hits the pillow. No exceptions. 

‘It’s not like _that_ ,” Adam says. “I’m just not tired. So I find more things to do.”

“Parrish, that’s weird as fuck.” Ronan reaches his hand into Adam’s lunchbox, a shiny new thing that he still doesn’t like but can’t seem to get rid of. He has food at lunch now, not just a peanut butter sandwich, but fruit and chips and it’s enough that Adam doesn’t mind Ronan stealing his food, anymore. 

“You’re done with your stuff, and you’re clearly tired… why not just… sleep?” Gansey is doing that thing again. That thing where he’s pretending he isn’t being delicate with Adam, but he definitely is. 

“It’s not like that,” Adam says, and then steers the conversation away to something less of the realm of what he doesn’t want to talk about. 

No matter what the circumstances, he is Adam Parrish. He is not born from sculpted gold and marble; he was raised from the dirt and steel and told to shape it into something. No matter how clean Adam can get, there is still dirt under his nails and between his knuckles; no matter how much Adam shapes himself, it’s all dented and ripped and used for spare parts. He is not made to sit on a couch and watch TV, to wake up rested. 

The work is never done.

:: ::

“Hey, hold on a second, Adam,” Laura says when Ronan drops him off that night. She and James are sitting at the kitchen table; Nico is doing his homework and Sarah and Allison are watching something in the small den. The two girls aren’t that much younger than Adam, but Nico is only seven, and adding and subtracting is hard.

“Your plate is in the microwave,” James says. It’s not an order. Even though, it prickles against Adam, years of training screaming at him to know that even if it doesn’t sound like an order, it is one. Slowly, Adam goes through the motions of reheating what looks like lasagna and sitting at the table across from Laura. 

“How was Boyd’s?” she asks, as James helps Nico with a word problem.

“It’s all right. He asked if I wanted more hours.” Adam desperately wants more hours. There are no orders in this house, but there are rules. No more than one, part-time job, and he has to be home by nine on school nights. But what Adam needs is security; he doesn’t know his finances, not anymore, but he knows he can guess that he’ll need more if shit goes sideways. 

“We’ve discussed this,” James says, which is honestly what he says to most arguments Adam tries to have more than once. “It hasn’t been that long, and you’re still adjusting. We don’t want to overload you.” 

“It’s honestly fine,” Adam says, pushes food around on the plate. He feels like he’s always in some Catch 22; wasting food is a no, but he’s never hungry. It’s just something he has to do to live. And Adam doesn’t like to do it with an audience. 

“If there’s something you need, we can get it,” Laura inputs, as Nico hops off his chair and goes to join the others in the living room. 

“It’s not that,” Adam says immediately. 

“Hmm, we need to buy you some new pants this weekend anyways, so let me know if something else pops up,” Laura says, frowning. “But we don’t think adding more shifts, even on the weekend, is a great idea.” And then James and Laura share a look, and Adam knows he’s about to discover the reason behind this entire conversation. Final Jeopardy. No, wait, that’s what’s on the TV. 

“You seem… tired,” James starts. “And we want to make sure you have an effective sleeping schedule.”

And just like that the noose gets a little bit tighter. They can control when he eats and that he has to participate in dinners and group therapy and they can decide when he gets to work, but they don’t get this, too. This works.

“It is effective,” Adam says stiffly. “I have homework to do. Can I go?”

“You haven’t eaten much,” Laura says reflexively, but she takes a moment and a breath. “Adam, we’re not trying to tell you what to do. I know it seems like we’re just making rules, but we’re not doing it to be controlling.”

“We want to work with you to figure out what works—what actually works, not just what you can live with,” James adds. Adam pushes a piece of meat to the other side of his plate. This is, arguably, the dumbest conversation he’s had with them this week. And they also had an entire argument over Adam’s school notebook Tuesday morning. Adam can buy his own shit. 

“As long as you can get eight hours, we’re happy,” Laura says. “If it’s not going to happen all at night, maybe making time to take a nap after school is an option. Another one is setting the goal to sleep before midnight on school nights.”

“I’m not five,” Adam says, a little too shortly, because Nico’s head turns and Adam’s face flushes. He doesn’t want to be that much of a dick. 

“Take some time to think about it and let us know your plan.” 

Fuck it. Adam just guesses that he’s going to have to prove a point. They want him to go to sleep before midnight? Fuck that. Sleep is for the weak.

:: ::

“Dude, the fuck are you doing?” Adam is sitting in Ronan’s car outside of James and Laura’s house. It is two weeks into his new schedule, and honestly, the satisfaction is mostly just replaced with bone-deep exhaustion. It’s familiar, the same kind as the days that used to start with a factory shift and end when the sun would rise over his essay.

“What do you mean?” Adam asks, voice harsh. His head is resting far back on the seat, adam’s apple prominent and bobbing. “I’m fine.”

“You’re full of shit, Parrish,” Ronan says. “You fell asleep in Latin today. You were actively drooling on your notes.” 

“It’s nothing. It’s normal,” Adam says, goes to pull his door open. Ronan leans over, stops him before he can. 

“We never really talked about, you know, all of it.” Ronan brings a wrist to his mouth, chews his bracelets. “But that shit wasn’t normal. None of it.” 

“We’re not talking about this. I have to go in for dinner, or they’ll want to talk about it,” Adam says, gets out of the car. 

“Parrish, wait,” Ronan says, throwing himself out of his own car. “You obviously don’t have to tell me shit. But…” 

“But what?” Adam’s voice is cold. “Look, if Gansey is worried, he doesn’t need to be.” 

“He’s not the only one.” Ronan doesn’t speak until Adam is halfway up the driveway. “He’s not the only one who is worried about you right now.”

Adam doesn’t turn around. 

He tries to make it look like everything is good, that he is totally fine and normal and functional. It’s a Wednesday and he hates Wednesdays because Mondays and Wednesdays they have to have group therapy after dinner and it just sucks. 

They can’t force him to talk but they can force him to be there, if he ever wants to be emancipated. If he’s not there, they can also drag him somewhere else to have the same non-conversations with someone else.

But he takes his seat at the table. 

He’s next to Allison and across from Nico and Nico smiles at him and starts talking about dinosaurs.

“—they’re big and Ms. Johnson says that some of them were bigger than elephants,” he says. 

“Have you learned about fossils yet?” Adam asks, manages a smile with it. And like that, Nico is off about paleontology and fossils and bones. 

“Wow. You know a lot, practically a dinosaur expert,” Adam says at the end of it. He’s eating the salad, and he knows he can see James watching what he’s doing. Nico smiles and shoves a forkful of spinach into his mouth. 

“I wish we were still learning about dinosaurs,” Sarah says, makes a face at Allison. They’re not the same age, but they’re both in middle school. “Math sucks.”

“Hmm… rephrase?” Laura asks, and Sarah sighs. 

“You know. My teacher is a jerk and he doesn’t teach us and then yells at us when we don’t know stuff,” Sarah says. 

“I had him last year. He’s mean but his tests are similar to the review problems at the back of the chapters,” Allison offers. “At least it’s not Adam’s homework.” 

“Hey now,” Adam says. “Don’t bring me into this.”

“You go to the fancy kid school. You’re good at this stuff.” Sarah’s voice is incredulous. “You have so much homework it gives me a headache.” 

“Nah. I just study a lot,” Adam dismisses. 

“You can always help me with math. Sometimes even Laura can’t.” Allison sounds so honest and James almost chokes on his water. Laura reaches over and hits his shoulder. 

“Uh,” Adam says, looks to Laura. “I did this stuff a lot more recently than than Laura.” He needs to know he said the right thing, that this all isn’t going to blow up in front of everyone. Even though he doesn’t need them telling him what to do, the rest of them are still just kids. He doesn’t want to start a fight in front of them all. 

“Yeah. Because she’s _old_.” Nico draws out the o in old, and Laura just laughs. There’s no fallout. 

It makes it harder, when he has to sit on the couch next to Allison and listen to them all talk. He doesn’t talk. He never has. No matter how many times he’s asked a question that’s about nothing important. Adam knows how it works. He answers one question, and then another, and then he’s telling them everything. 

Ease up on his grip just a little bit, and before he knows it he’s drowning in the flood. 

And it’s not like it’s the same. They’re… okay, Allison is only two years below him, but they’re younger. Nico still barely understands what happened to him, and Allison and Sarah had it so much worse than he ever did. It’s hard. He hates it. He hates that they can go from eating dinner and joking about math homework to talking about why it’s hard for them to trust any adults. He can’t do that. He can’t just… talk. That’s not how he is. 

So he doesn’t talk at all.

“Adam, how are your relationships with your teachers at school?” 

Adam’s jaw clenches.

“Adam, tell us about work at the garage.” 

Adam looks to his knees. 

“Adam, do you have anything you want to add?” 

Adam digs his nails into the palms of his hands. 

“Adam, is there anything you want to say?”

There’s blood in the palms of Adam’s hands. He puts them in his pockets. He’s fine. 

He doesn’t need to talk.

:: ::

It’s only a few days later that everything falls to shit. It’s a bad day from the start; he’s so tired that sitting up is an effort, so tired that his eyes hurt at the small amount of light filtering in through the blinds. They’re heavy, refusing to open properly.

He brushes his teeth, vacantly staring at the bathroom mirror. His hands are shaking just a little, circles under his eyes dark like bruises. 

It’s quiet, that morning. No one is really talking, Nico clumsily eating cereal and Sarah and Allison nibbling on toast. Adam reaches for the coffee pot, but there’s nothing there.

There wasn’t yesterday, either.

“Sorry. James still hasn’t gone grocery shopping,” Laura says, from over the top of the newspaper. It sets Adam’s teeth on edge. It’s possible that it’s the truth, he knows it, but he thinks it’s their attempt at a check in whatever fucked up chess game they’re still playing. 

“Okay.” Adam’s voice is deliberately even. “I don’t need a ride, today. Ronan’s picking me up.” 

“After school, too?” Laura’s voice is light, but it’s deliberate. 

“Yeah, if that’s cool,” Adam says. It doesn’t sound like he’s asking permission. 

“Hmm, I’m going to be out there anyway. I can pick you up. Grab something to eat before he gets here.” Adam wants to argue, but he sees the gray BMW and knows this is his chance to bolt. So he does. 

When he sits in the car, Ronan rips out of the driveway with a roar. 

“You look pissed off,” he comments, over the thump of electronica. Every part of Adam brain is pulsing against the bass, and he shuts it off before he speaks. 

“I’m not. I just have a fucking headache,” Adam says, rubs the heels of his hands into his eyes. 

“Nocturnal lifestyle treating you well?” Ronan asks, voice acidic. 

“Honestly fuck off.” There’s no heat behind Adam’s works. “I need to fucking sleep.” 

“Hmm… can’t promise I’ll drive slow enough for a nap. But, history is boring and you’ve got that first,” Ronan comments. Adam just gives him the finger. 

Somehow, Adam doesn’t fall asleep in history. He makes it all the way to physics lecture, last period of the day, and it’s all felt like he’s been swimming in the ocean; occasionally, the waves will completely wash over him and then he doesn’t register anything but how hard it is to get his brain to think, but most of the time it’s in the weird half state. He’s underwater partly, but he can see the waves coming crashing at him. 

Gansey is giving him his concerned dad looks and Ronan spends all of Latin kicking at Adam’s chair periodically. 

But he’s making it through. 

Then they get new seats in physics. See, it wouldn’t have been a problem, but the old bastard has moved Adam all the way to the right side of the room. It makes listening to lecture impossible; he can’t fucking hear half of the stuff the teacher is saying, and he can’t make out any of the words in the questions that he asks. 

It pisses him off. No matter how far he cranes his neck and moves his desk he’s missing words. It makes it impossible to take notes. But, there hasn’t been a cold call. Until there is. 

Adam is hurriedly catching up in his notes, and he doesn’t realize there’s a problem until the teacher is right in front of him.

“Parrish!” Adam practically jumps out of his chair. “I asked you a question.” 

“I’m sorry, sir,” Adam gets out. “I didn’t hear.” 

That was the wrong thing to say. Now he’s yelling and he’s so _loud_ that it makes Adam’s right ear ring; he had asked the question three times, Adam clearly wasn’t paying attention, and he just wants to sink into the floor and die. He can’t say anything. He thinks that the teacher must have forgotten, has to have forgotten that Adam’s deaf in his left ear, that’s the only explanation. 

“What do you have to say for yourself?” The teacher is a screaming, red-faced mess. Adam just wants to sleep, but he’s not going to risk a detention just because this guy wants a fight. 

“I’m deaf in my left ear. Sir.” Adam doesn’t add any emotion at all. Immediately, there’s a rush of air of the classroom that means, given the second of opportunity, this information will spread everywhere. 

It’s worth it, just a little bit, to see the range of emotions flitting across the asshole’s face. Anger, disbelief, recollection, shame, anger, guilt… it’s like a fucking kaleidoscope. If Adam would look away from his face, he knows he would the class looking at them both the way they watch tennis matches or whatever the fuck rich people do. 

“Ah. I seem to have forgotten.” He practically stutters it out. “Can you, uh, can you tell me the resultant magnetic field of a sphere with the given parameters?”

“No, I can’t. I haven’t heard most of the lecture,” Adam answers, and then he leaves. 

He ignores the whispers. They’re so fucking loud in his skull, and the sun is too fucking bright, and it’s all just too much. Adam just wants to go to sleep, or learn physics, or whatever. Whatever, whatever, whatever. He hopes that Laura isn’t out there waiting, but no such fucking luck. 

Adam throws himself into the passenger seat. At least this way he can avoid Gansey and Ronan about this. 

“Hey. You’re early,” Laura says, but she takes one look at Adam and something shifts. Adam doesn’t know what he looks like; he feels like all the barbed wire that protects his lungs, woven like tinsel around his ribs, is poking through his skin, ready to cut whoever comes near him. One wrong move, and it doesn’t matter. “What happened?”

“Nothing.” It sounds like Adam has choked on the words. “Can we just fucking _not_ right now?” 

Laura doesn’t say anything, not for a long moment. Adam is resisting the urge to scratch at his wrists, do something to release the energy beneath his skin, the inescapable feeling that something is going to explode if he doesn’t do something making it impossible to think about anything else.

“Adam,” Laura says, as Adam picks at his wrist. “Adam, please talk to me.” 

“It’s nothing.” Adam knows it sounds like he’s holding back a tideray with nothing but his hands. “I don’t want to talk about it. It’s stupid. Can we just go?” 

Laura starts the car, but her face is still creased. “Is it something with Ronan?”

“What? No.” Adam is so shocked that he can’t focus on anything else. “Why do you think there’s something with Ronan?”

“I’m not accusing him of something. I just thought maybe something had happened, because you’re upset,” Laura comments. 

Adam has to unclench his teeth from the inside of his cheek when he tastes iron. 

“It’s not him. It’s just a stupid teacher,” Adam admits. “It’s not a big deal.” 

“What happened?” Laura’s voice is deadly serious. “Adam, I’m asking because I need to know what he’s done. You’re not in trouble.” 

“It’s honestly nothing. We had new seats in physics and I was all the way over on the right side so I couldn’t really hear things that well. He tried to ask a question and I didn’t hear him, or that he was talking to me. He got mad.” Adam looks down. He can’t look at her, not when the wire digs just a little deeper into his bones. 

Laura lets out a sharp exhale. “He is well aware of your hearing loss.” She sounds angrier than Adam can remember her being. “I’m going to be emailing him, and the school, tonight.”

“You don’t need to do anything. I told him,” Adam says, voice hollow. Inexplicably, the itch from anxiety has ebbed away into exhaustion. “And it’s not like they’re required to do anything. It’s a private school. There are no IEPs.”

“Adam,” she says, voice all serious. “It is a big deal.” Adam tunes out the rest of what she says, about the responsibility of teachers and it’s just whatever. Whatever whatever whatever. Adam feels like he’s teetering on an edge, that he’s going to fall off this weird knife’s edge of being painfully alert and fucking exhausted at the same time into something murky and unclear. 

He doesn’t say anything, can’t even bring himself to talk when it’s not just them in the car. He knows the rest of them pick up on the tense energy, because it isn’t loud and every time someone talks it sounds hesitant, but does it make him awful if he doesn’t mind that it’s quiet? He hates the fact that he’s making everything uncomfortable but he knows if he had to pretend to be normal that it would send him over the edge. Adam can’t sit here and listen about kids with their normal fucking lives in school despite all of the utter shit that’s happened to them and think that he’s not going to have any of that. Ever. It’s like he’s one step removed from the world, right now. He’s not really hearing anything, doesn’t know if someone tries to stop him from locking himself in his room. Nothing is registering beyond his own heartbeat and the realization that there’s something irreparably broken. 

The first tear feels like his last defense giving way. He’s so _tired_. There’s a weight bearing down on him, not enough to strangle him, but enough to make it feel like it is. It’s the most helpless Adam has ever felt. There’s so much that’s out of his reach, right now, so many things that he should be able to control, but can’t. Doesn’t have a bike, so he needs rides places. Can’t work, so he needs to trust that there’s going to be food. Can’t hear out of his left ear, so he has to trust that his teachers won’t be assholes. Can’t trust someone to fucking help, so he doesn’t let anyone know. He can’t stop crying. So he has to cry. 

Adam is curled into a ball. The one thing he can control is how loud he is, and the one thing he knows is how to cry without anyone knowing. Not a sound leaves Adam’s mouth, but his chest his heaving and the tears are falling hot and fast and the grip around his ribs is tighter than ever before. He can’t stop. No matter how many tears he lets out, no matter how many silent exhales and inhales follow, it doesn’t feel better. It makes him dizzy and builds the pressure behind his eyes and his grip on his sweater sleeves is so tight that it hurts. 

Adam doesn’t think that he has actually stopped crying before he finally sleeps.

:: ::

Adam hasn’t come down for dinner. Laura and James don’t want to push, but they also don’t know if he heard. Laura gives James a look when he casually says he’s going to go check before they all start, because she thinks what he wants is space.

James cracks Adam’s door open, and his stomach drops just a little bit. Adam is curled up tight on the center of his bed, still in his school clothes. The pillow around his head is wet and his face hasn’t even dried, yet. 

James turns off the lights, closes the door behind him. There’s a lot they have to address, but it can wait until after Adam sleeps.

:: ::

Adam wakes up suddenly. There’s light on his face, which feels stretched and tight and inexplicably dirty. There’s light on his face. _Fuck_. He’s late for school.

But when Adam bolts down the stairs, it’s just James in the kitchen, looking over some paperwork. What the fuck is happening?

“Oh, you’re up,” James says, and Adam’s eyes go to the clock on the wall. It’s almost two in the afternoon. School is ending. 

“Why didn’t you get me up? I missed school,” Adam says, voice harsh and cracking after not speaking for so long. His entire body feels dry and heavy and strained. 

“You needed to sleep.” James’s voice is carefully neutral. “You didn’t even stir when your alarm went off.”

“You don’t get to decide that for me.” Adam can feel his hands shaking, can hear the tremor in his voice, but he is not backing down. 

“Adam, why don’t you sit down and we can talk?” Petulantly, Adam grips the kitchen counter and shakes his head. “When was the last time you slept, before last night?” James asks.

“It doesn’t matter. I missed so much work and I could have gone to school. I need to go to school.” Adam knows he’s not forming a coherent argument, but he can’t think around the pounding of his heart in his skull. 

“It’s almost over. I don’t think we could have woken you up if we had tried.” Adam hates that James can say it calmly. 

“It doesn’t _fucking_ matter. You don’t get to decide when I sleep and when I go to school and when I eat and all that shit. I don’t need you to do any of that.” Adam is yelling, and he thinks he’s done, and there are two sides of him surging with anxiety and equal measure. There are no raised fists. James is not yelling back. 

Why isn’t he yelling back?

“Why aren’t you mad?” Adam’s voice cracks. “Yell back. Yell _back_.” He can feel everything leaving his body. Someone has poked a hole—no that’s not right. Adam is being ripped to shreds by something he doesn’t even know and he is going to stand there and not say anything at all? 

James doesn’t say anything. 

“Why don’t you?” 

He doesn’t say anything. Adam leaves. 

No one says anything. 

Adam goes back to sleep.

:: ::

Adam Parrish has always been hungry. In the trailer, he had familiarized the pangs and aches and uncomfortable nausea that came with it; even now, he eats what he needs and no more. Except, Adam Parrish isn’t hungry anymore.

There’s no driving force that makes it necessary, anymore. Because he can’t be in that house. The first week after it all, he had tried; he had sat at the table and listened to them all be comfortable and normal and he couldn’t look at the food or at James without bile rising in his throat. There’s so much anxiety, now, more than when he was hiding money from Robert Parrish. It lives under his skin, makes his bones and hands restless unless he’s picking at the skin of his wrists. And that only lessens the unrelenting pulse, the thrum of it. It never settles completely. Not in that house.

So his arms are covered in scabs and Adam Parrish has a bed that he can lay in and nothing else. He does his homework in the library or picks up shifts at Boyd’s or crashes moving dollies with Ronan and he doesn’t go back to that house unless he has to. 

They keep saying that they want to _talk_. Adam knows that’s not what they want. They want to tell him things about himself that aren’t true, talk about coping and abuse and things that may affect other people but Adam is fine. They want to tell Adam things they think they know. He knows that if he tells them anything that they’re going to make it something that it’s not. But he can’t move out. Adam had called his social worker, had swallowed his pride with as much grace as a razor and had begged to be emancipated. 

No one listens. 

Ronan has taken to lingering, when he drives Adam home now. He’ll stop at drive thrus and order way too much food and try to pass it off on Adam but he smells the grease and he wants to vomit. 

Adam Parrish isn’t hungry, anymore.

:: ::

“Hey,” Ronan says, about a month into the new normal. “Wait up a sec, before you go in.” Ronan is chewing on his bracelets, a sign that something is about to be said that he doesn’t want to say and Adam probably doesn’t want to hear.

“One of these days they might get pissed I’m breaking curfew,” Adam says, swallows down the nausea as he steps from the car. 

“I mean, I doubt it, considering you haven’t ever given a shit,” Ronan says. “Look, man. I just… are you okay? Are they being shitbags?” 

“What?” Adam asks, pauses halfway up the drive. “They’re not… not like that.” 

“Then what the hell is going on?” 

Adam doesn’t know how to answer that. He brings a nail to his wrist, to fight against the rapidly growing anxiety, but Ronan stops his hand before he can get there, his eyes dark and murky with something that Adam doesn’t understand. 

“Parrish, something is wrong,” Ronan tries again. “I get that your default is, like, eat to survive, but I haven’t seen you actively eat anything in weeks. And you’re barely there.” 

“I eat. I’m going to eat right now. You know I just don’t like eating during school.” Adam’s voice is detached, and he turns to leave right then. Ronan’s hand is still on his wrist. 

“Just… let me know. If shit is bad here,” Ronan says, and Adam can’t turn around. He doesn’t know what he’ll do if he does. 

So he enters the house. There’s no one waiting. Adam’s plate stays on the table.

:: ::

Time stops being real. Even when Adam isn’t actively trying to stay awake, sleep is eluding him. Or, it does sometimes. He can stare at the ceiling, restless energy driving him to fold and unfold his shirts or pick at his scabs until the sun rises again, one night and then the next he would sleep through his alarm if someone didn’t shake him awake.

He can’t remember the last time he was hungry. Adam doesn’t know why he’s so worried about hiding that he’s not hungry, because it’s not like it’s a big deal, but he finds himself grabbing protein bars just to let them pile up in his locker, throws dinner plates full of food into the garbage disposal so they can’t find them in the trash. Adam thinks it’s the anxiety making his hands shake but then he’ll go to stand from underneath a car at Boyd’s and the world will go suspiciously quiet for a minute. It’s not even then. He’ll be sitting next to Gansey in the quad and go to stand and Gansey is suddenly much closer to him than he was before. And he can see something in Gansey and Ronan, like they’re hiding a secret that they think Adam already knows. It makes him nervous.

Adam doesn’t know why he’s worried, but the sensation never fucking leaves. It’s hard, because things have stopped making sense; he can be taking perfectly detailed notes in Latin one second and the next second he’s in calculus staring at integrals he calculated and have no idea when he wrote them down. 

Boyd has cut Adam’s hours. 

Gansey and Ronan have started trying to cook at Monmouth, so Adam doesn’t want to hang out there. He’s started to feel nauseous; a lowkey thing all the time that takes his non-existent appetite and make the thought of eating anything tear Adam up from the inside out. He doesn’t want to throw up. Throwing up is a waste of food that someone else could have eaten. 

Adam guesses he has to go home after school. Oh fucking shit. It’s a Wednesday. 

Adam hasn’t pretended to go to group therapy in over a month, and he’s not about to start right now. He walks home, and by the time he gets there he can smell pasta and tomato sauce and it takes everything he has not to gag as he trudges up the stairs. He doesn’t know why it’s such an effort, but Adam is sweating and panting by the time he’s halfway done. 

He sits at his desk, realizes he can’t remember what classes he’s even had today, can’t remember what the homework is. 

Adam lays down instead.

:: ::

Adam wakes up to hands on his shoulders, and he immediately panics. He goes flying back, back hitting the wall until dots blink in front of his eyes and it takes a minute before it clears to James and Laura. Adam can hear his own breathing in his ears and his heart is pounding way too hard but he tries to swallow it all back.

“What?” Adam’s voice is harsh. He’s slumped against the wall, and it feels like he hasn’t slept at all. He’s so tired that all he wants to do is curl back up.

“You weren't waking up.” Laura’s voice sounds shaky. “It took five minutes.” 

“Oh,” Adam gets out, swallows harshly. “I’m fine.” He tries to swing his legs out of bed and start getting his shit together, but he’s barely put weight on his feet before he’s toppling sideways into a mass and then there are arms around his torso sitting him back onto the bed. “I’m fine.” 

“No, you’re not.” James’s voice doesn’t sound unkind. “Laura, we’re going to have to take him to Dr. Hing.” 

“Don’t need the doctor,” Adam gets out, puts his head between his knees to ride out how the world isn’t sitting still. There’s a hand at his back, but Adam flinches and suddenly it’s gone. “I already had the well-check thing.” 

“It’s not a discussion,” James says, voice impossibly gentle. “It can’t go on like this, Adam.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Adam goes to stand again, but this time there are hands on his shoulders stopping him before he can even start. 

“When was the last time you ate?” Laura asks, and Adam just takes in a ragged inhale. Laura seems to take that as answer enough. “James, you get the rest of them to school. I’ll call Hing’s office and then we can go when you get back.” 

“No, it’s fine—” Adam starts, but he doesn’t even bother finishing it because there’s no point. Whatever freedom he thought he had grabbed with bloodied fingers is clearly gone. He’s too tired to care. 

No one says anything. James just leaves, and Laura sits next to Adam, careful to keep a gap between them. She makes a call that Adam deliberately doesn’t listen to, and then they just sit until the house has quieted around them. 

“Come on, let’s get you some breakfast,” Laura says, and Adam has to physically bite back the nausea as he’s pulled to his feet. This time, the world spins, but he manages to stay upright. He hates that she hovers the entire way down the stairs, has to fight the urge to vomit even as he’s sitting in the wooden chair and Laura is bustling around. The smells themselves are making everything harder. 

When a plate with a single piece of buttered toast is set in front of Adam, he digs his nails into a scab on his arm, tries to push back the nausea rising through his throat.

“I can’t,” Adam says, voice cracking. “I’ll throw it up.” There’s a dangerous silence.

“Have you deliberately made yourself sick before?” Laura asks, and Adam just shakes his head harshly. 

“No. But if I eat I’m going to throw up,” he says, tries to make it all make sense. He isn’t even aware that the scabs on his arms are bleeding until Laura’s hand is on his wrist and is pulling one of Adam’s hands away from the other. 

“Can you try?” Adam hates how patient her voice sounds. 

They sit in silence, Laura and him and the toast, for twenty minutes while they wait. And then it’s botched conversations in the car, and then Adam is sitting in a waiting room, stuck between two adults he doesn’t think he’ll ever really know. 

“How long has this been going on?” James asks, filling out a clipboard of information. 

“Dunno,” Adam answers dully.

“When did you eat last?” James asks, and Adam just shrugs. 

It continues like that until someone calls Adam’s name and he stands. But he stands too quickly, and then there are hands on his elbows until the world has come back from the grey nothingness. They hover, barely a step behind Adam as they move down the short hallway to a scale. 

“If you could take off your sweatshirt and step on the scale facing me,” the nurse says, and Adam trembles violently at the cold as he steps backwards onto the metal. Adam doesn’t even care enough to think about that’s what’s happening. 

There’s a lot of murmurs, then, and then Adam is lead to an exam room and helped up onto a table where the same nurse takes his blood pressure and his pulse and his temperature and asks James and Laura a lot of questions. They finally let Adam put his sweatshirt back on, and he curls up against the wall, trying to get warm again. 

The nurse leaves Adam alone with James and Laura, says that the doctor will be in shortly. 

“Adam, we don’t want you to be alarmed,” Laura starts, making sure Adam’s eyes are meeting hers from across the small room. “But there’s a high probability that—”But James has laid a hand on her arm, and Laura stops.

“We’ll discuss things with the doctor,” James says, and Adam just looks at his knees. 

“I don’t know what I did wrong,” Adam admits, biting the inside of his cheek. 

Laura looks like she wants to reply to that, but that’s when there’s a knock on the door and then Dr. Hing is sitting in the rolling chair and looking at them all seriously. 

“So, Adam, why do you think you’re here?” she asks, all four foot eight and serious. It takes Adam by surprise, for a long second.

“I dunno,” Adam asks, picks at his wrists under his sweatshirt. He knows that this is a test, that he has to answer correctly if he wants to avoid whatever the consequence of this is going to be. “I didn’t eat breakfast.” 

“Hmm,” she says, writes something on a tablet. “What does a typical day look for you, food and drink-wise?” 

“I, um, I don’t really eat breakfast. I drink water sometimes during school, and sometimes I’ll eat something at lunch if my friend is bugging me. I, uh—” Adam glances at Laura and James. “I eat dinner most nights.” 

“He’s been flushing them down the garbage disposal,” James answers automatically, and Adam feels his face flush red. Has he really been so obvious?” Dr. Hing’s face is turned down, so he can’t see what she thinks of any of it. 

“That doesn’t sound like a lot. About how much water do you drink per day?” Her voice is still as calm as ever. 

“Most days a lot. About sixty four ounces,” Adam answers. “But, uh, not the last few days.” 

“When do you eat, Adam?” 

Adam just shrugs. “I eat when I’m hungry.” 

“And how often are you hungry?” she presses, and Adam digs the heels of hands into his eyes, trying to release some of the pressure there. It doesn’t work. 

“Not often,” Adam admits, voice barely above a whisper. “I don’t need a lot of food.” 

“Okay,” she says, and then the chair she’s in is as close to Adam as she can get. It’s quite a feat, because Adam is as far in the corner as he can get. “Well, you’ve lost seventeen pounds in about a month, and you were already underweight then. As it stands, you’re at risk for multiple heart complications, including a heart attack, as well as refeeding syndrome. Given all of that and the reported multiple losses of consciousness, I’m going to have to order a direct admission to the hospital.” 

“Hospital?” Adam asks, bolting upright. “No. I don’t need to. I’ll try harder. I’ll eat right now,” Adam says, and then he’s on his feet to show he’s fine. 

He blinks, and then he’s staring at the ceiling, and there are three swimming faces above his own. 

“I’m calling it in. Someone is going to come and transfer him as soon as they can get a bed ready,” the doctor says, and Adam goes to sit up, but there’s a hand on his chest, keeping him on the ground. There are hands at his back, slowly helping Adam sit up. His vision isn’t really working, and things are seemingly swimming through his left ear instead of his right. 

“I’m fine,” Adam all but slurs, but no one is listening. They get Adam into a chair, press something into his hand and tell him to drink, but Adam just holds it. Eventually, they take it back, and Adam is allowed to curl into as tight of a ball as he can manage. He doesn’t know who’s all in the room, and he doesn’t care. Nothing is penetrating the thick layer of dread, covering him as thickly and as heavily as gauze. 

At some point, the general noise gets louder and then there are hands helping Adam from one chair into another. He doesn’t even argue that he can walk, because it’s clear that nothing he says is going to matter from here on out. 

When the hallways stop moving into a small room, there are still multiple nurses. Two plastic bracelets are slapped across his right wrist and then he’s being told to change into clothing he’s handed and they won’t give him his sweatshirt back. He’s shivering and he feels like an exposed wire; he looks around and he can’t see Laura and James. It’s just him and the nurses, and Adam feels his anxiety spike as they wheel him back to the hallway, and when he goes to stand for the scale before they can touch him he feels himself fall again. 

It doesn’t matter. He only blacked out for a second and so he’s still told to step on the scale and Adam’s hands shake on the railing as nurses write down numbers and then he’s in a different room with curtains and a bed and this time there are hands on his shoulders to stop him from getting up until they can help him do so. As soon as he’s in the bed, there are hands attaching stickers with wires to his chest, slipping something on his finger and something under the skin in the crook of his left arm. 

James and Laura are let into the room right when a cup of oatmeal is put in front of Adam; it isn’t much, but Adam looks at it and he is biting back frustrated tears. 

“Adam?” James asks, sitting in the chair on the side without the nurses. “Hey.”

“Hi,” Adam bites back, voice rough as he refuses to even pick up the spoon. 

“Whatever you don’t eat is supplemented with an Ensure,” a nurse says. “If that fails, a feeding tube.” 

Adam’s vision blurs, and he can feel the tears want to fall, but he can’t let them. This is so stupid. It’s like he can’t even reason with himself; he knows that he’s going to have to eat because now it’s all that anyone is focusing on, but he looks at it and it makes the waves of nausea start to crest, threatening to spill over. 

“I can’t,” Adam gets out, voice harsh. 

“Can you try? Even just a little bit,” Laura urges, and Adam just looks at her blankly. He can’t stop his hands from trembling, and he feels so fucking cold and honestly it doesn’t matter. If he doesn’t eat, they’ll stick a tube down his nose and do it for him. It means he doesn’t have to actively taste of it, doesn’t have to swallow it down and hope that it sits right. At least then it gets done. 

After twenty minutes, they all come to consensus to set him up with the nasogastric tubing. Right as they get the tubing ready, a nurse is asking if James and Laura want to say, because it can be unpleasant, but they remain steadfast. Then, someone hands Adam a cup with a straw and tells him to tip his head down to his chest and drink and he swallows the tube down with it; it’s not painful, but it’s not pleasant. Adam is still getting used to the feeling of the tube at the back of his throat when someone wheels in an x ray and they verify that, yes, it’s in the right spot, and then someone is setting up a bag with a pump and food is being put in Adam’s stomach. 

It’s easier than eating. 

The doctors comes in to talk, right as Laura moves from the corner of the area back to a seat by the bed. She says a lot of words about his heart and blood sugar and weight that he doesn’t really listen to, but then she calls Adam’s name and he’s forced to come back to the conversation.

“Given the significant orthostatic hypotension and tachycardia, you’re on strict bed rest. Absolutely no getting in and out without someone helping. That shouldn’t be an issue, because someone will be with you 24/7,” she says, and Adam feels his face heat with embarrassment. “We’re hoping that we can get you stabilized and released within a few days.” 

“Okay,” Adam says, but even speaking heightens the feeling of the tube and Adam is struck by how quickly this has become not-normal. Every single bit of control he has stolen and clung to with bloodied finger tips is gone. There is a tube down his nose because Adam has decided he doesn’t want to eat and now not only does not get to decide where he goes when, but he can’t even go anywhere. 

But after she answers whatever the fuck James and Laura ask, they’re left alone. Adam closes his eyes, hopes he can avoid any kind of conversation.

“Hey,” Laura says, and Adam looks at her. “This is a lot. How are you doing?” 

“Does it matter?” Adam asks. “It’s not going to change anything.” 

“Feeling like you have no control?” James asks, and Adam nods. “Adam, I know that this all seems unnecessary, but I promise you the doctors and nurses and us aren’t doing this to make anything harder, or to control you.” Adam lets out a harsh breath of air, is biting his lip to try and not cry. 

“But you are. I can’t even go to piss without someone having to help,” Adam says, brings the hand without an IV up to his face to swipe at the water pooling in his eyes. 

“We know that it’s hard right now,” Laura says, and Adam looks down at the blanket and his plain arms. They’re covered in scabs. She taps his hand, and Adam has to force his eyes to meet his. “We want to say that we’re sorry.” 

“For what? You didn’t do this,” Adam gets out, knows that his lower lip is trembling but he can’t do anything to stop it. His stomach is starting to feel uncomfortably full, but he knows if he looks at the bag it’s not going to be anywhere close to empty. 

“We knew you were struggling. We should have done more to help you, before it got to this. I know saying sorry probably means nothing now, but we need you to know that we are sorry that we weren’t there,” James says, and now there are tears streaming down Adam’s face.

There’s so much. There’s too much. He can’t deal with anything else beyond the crushing embarrassment and defeat and exhaustion. Adam hadn’t known that they had even known. He had been so careful. 

“I don’t… I didn’t…” he gets out, but something has broken and Adam is crying. It’s the hardest he’s cried, and he tries to smother his sobs, but he can’t and they’re so loud when they’re the only thing in the room. There are hands, Laura’s hands, on his shoulders, and Adam lets her guide his head to her shoulder, lets her hold him because it feels so fucking good and it has been so long since anyone has held him like that. 

His breaths are short, and he can’t squeeze tightly because his arms are shaking and they can’t fuck up the tube but he can feel her heartbeat and her hand in his hair and Adam cries. 

Adam is exhausted when it’s over. 

Her hands are still carding through his hair when his eyes close. It feels more like a defeat than anything else.


	2. i find myself longing for change

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> and then, it gets easier.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> same warnings as before but also some descriptions of vomiting (not in the context of the ED, but still)
> 
> haha i have an orgo exam on wed but i wrote 8k of this instead

“Is he okay?” Those are not the words Laura expected to hear out of Ronan Lynch’s mouth, the first time they officially meet. Until now, he’s been the kid who drives like the devil and drops Adam off late. But there is sincere worry, and it almost makes the tattoo and leather jacket look harsher than before. Laura has to try to hold back her judgement, because these are Adam’s friends, and she doesn’t have a reason to distrust them. She still does, though. 

But Adam is in the room, has been in there with a sitter since they had left to pick up the others from school and walk them through what had happened, and they need to talk before they can see Adam. 

“He was asleep when we left,” James says, hands crossed across his chest. “He’s going to be okay.”

“We didn’t get to talk about specifics over the phone,” the other one says, and Laura is struck by how different all three of these boys are. Ronan Lynch, dangerous and rough, Richard Gansey, the poster child for old money, and Adam Parrish, unknowable and hurting. “Can you walk us through what happened?”

James lets out a long sigh. “I’m sure you’re aware that Adam has been having food issues,” he starts, and watches both of their faces darken. “We couldn’t wake him up for school this morning. And then when we finally got him to wake up, he was blacking out just from standing up.” 

“We took him to the pediatrician first, just to be sure. She ordered a direct admission,” Laura continues, watches as Ronan brings the leather bracelets that cover his wrists to his mouth. “Right now, he’s unstable. He’s severely underweight and at risk for multiple heart complications, but some of that should start to stabilize as we start getting some nutrients and calories into him.”

“He’s eating?” Ronan asks, voice wrecked. 

“He hasn’t yet, but they’ve got him on a nasogastric tube and are doing feedings when he refuses to eat,” James explains. 

“And after he’s stable?” Ronan asks, voice full of barbed wire. “What are you going to do then?” James is taken aback by the sheer amount of accusation in the kid’s tone. 

“We haven’t discussed any of that with Adam,” James says. “We don’t think we’re going to push for inpatient treatment, because we doubt that would be an effective method with Adam.” 

“Then what the fuck is your plan?” Ronan asks. “Cause if you don’t have one, we’re going to be right back here next month.”

“We want to work with Adam on this from home,” Laura explains. “But that’s not the point right now.” 

“Ronan,” Gansey warns, when he sees Ronan’s lips curling into a snarl. He turns on his presidential glamor and turns back to Adam’s guardians. “I think what Ronan is trying to get at is that this isn’t a particularly new phenomena.” 

“No that’s not it, _Dick_ ,” Ronan starts, voice saturated with acid. “They’re just trying to judge if they’re actually going to let us in there. Well, you can’t stop me. Not if he wants me here.” 

“That’s not it at all,” Laura says quickly, looks Ronan in the eyes like she’s staring down a bull. “We just want to make sure that we can work together, moving forward. To help Adam.” 

Ronan looks at Gansey, and then without hesitation the leather bracelets are in his hands and they can all see the angry red scars on his wrists. 

“I’ve been there,” he says, voice shaking. “Adam was there for me, and so was Gansey. They tried their fucking best to help me, so I’m going to try my fucking best to help him. Whether or not you approve. Got it?” 

Neither of them have anything to say to that, so they move to let Ronan and Gansey into Adam’s room.

:: ::

When Adam wakes up, someone he doesn’t know is sitting in a chair by the wall. He does a double take, but the man doesn’t say anything, head in a book, so Adam just blinks and sits up a little.

“Hi,” he gets out, and the man’s head looks up.

“Hey, I’m Dominic,” he says in return. “Your guardians stepped out, so I’m sitting with you.”

“Oh, okay,” Adam says, because he remembers that he’s not allowed to be alone, and he guesses this is what that means. He brings his right hand to scrub at his face, trying to wake up, but that’s when there’s a nurse and another cup of oatmeal. “How often do I have to do this shit?”

“Three meals and three snacks a day,” she answers without hesitation. Adam just sighs. He stares at the food, bland and mushy and yet somehow too much for Adam to even consider. He’s just exhausted.

“Where did they go?” Adam asks, and the nurse gives him a small smile. 

“They went to pick up the others from school and get them home. They’re back now, though, but they’re waiting for your friends in the hall.” 

“Fuck,” Adam says, and his head is in his hands. “Fucking shit.”

“Hmm,” the nurse says, going to look at screens monitoring his heart rate and whatever the fuck else. “Are you going to eat it?” 

“Do I have a choice?” Adam asks, but he makes no move to even pick up the spoon. The three of them sit in silence as Adam fidgets with the hospital bracelets and picks at his arms. 

“Just a few bites, Adam,” the nurse says, twenty minutes later. Adam shakes his head. “Okay. I’m going to get another feed set up through the tube, then.” 

She’s just turning the pump on when the door opens. 

James and Laura enter first, but Ronan is hot on their heels with Gansey. There’s something different in Ronan’s eyes, something murky and unclear and unlike anything except the night everything had fallen apart. 

“Hey, Parrish,” Ronan says, all gruff, but he chooses the chair closest to Adam and starts playing with Adam’s bony fingers like it’s nothing. It’s something he’s taken to doing, a way to keep Adam’s hands from picking at his arms. “You look like shit.” 

“Ronan.” Gansey’s got his dad voice on, and he claps a hand on Adam’s shoulder before he takes a seat next to Ronan. Laura and James don’t leave, instead choosing the couch by the door. Adam has the distinct feeling that they’re all being tested. He didn’t want them to ever meet, but especially not like this.

“Dick,” Ronan says, rolls his eyes and shares a look with Adam. It’s so fucking normal, and Adam feels like this is his first exhale in a long time. “You get anything besides bag mush around here, Parrish?”

Adam’s fingers fiddle with Ronan’s hand, trace the knuckles. 

“Fuck off, Lynch,” Adam mumbles, some time later, and Ronan raises his eyebrows.

“Nope. Not in the stars. Can’t do it today,” he says, voice all cheek. 

“For the last time, I don’t know what fucking movie that’s from.” Adam sounds tired, but not the exhausted kind of tired. Well, not just exhausted—it’s also the kind of tired that comes from knowing someone, knowing their jokes and every single funny story they’ve ever told, and still appreciating them the five hundredth time around. 

“Well, your calendar just cleared up. We can watch it sometime,” Ronan says. “Netflix and all that.” 

“Wow, you’d use technology for me?” Adam asks, presses a hand over his heart in mock surprise. 

“I’d like to see that,” Gansey says, and then he’s giving Adam one of those serious looks. “How are you, Adam?” 

Adam just shrugs, and it’s like the spell is broken and everyone can see his arms and shoulders go rigid, watch Adam close up in on himself entirely. He reaches up to itch at the tube, but Ronan’s hand has circled his wrist before it can even get halfway there. 

“I have to pee,” Adam says, desperate to get away from it, and James moves to help Adam. But Ronan is already on it, helping Adam stand, one strong arm around Adam’s waist, the other moving the pole with everything for Adam. He goes into the bathroom with Adam, and then he helps Adam back into bed. 

Fuck, maybe this kid isn’t as bad as they thought. 

From there, it feels just a little bit easier. Laura goes back home to give the rest of the kids dinner and get them ready for bed, but she says they’ll all probably stop by after school, and she’ll be back as soon as she can the next morning. James stays. 

“I’m glad that you’re… I’m glad that you’re getting help,” Gansey says out of nowhere, and Ronan curses under his breath. 

“Dick, drop it,” Ronan says, all gritted teeth. “Not fucking right now.”

Surprisingly, Gansey does. 

Ronan talks about how boring Latin is without Adam, talks about how mad Chainsaw is to be left with Blue at Monmouth, and Gansey says that Blue sends her best. It makes breathing easier, makes it easier when three hours have passed and a nurse comes back with food.

Ronan starts talking about Glendower, and Gansey follows suit. Adam listens, and when Ronan nudges Adam’s right hand with his own, Adam’s hand wraps around the spoon.

James could cry when he sees Adam put a bite in his mouth. No, he is crying, and James has to go into the hallway to keep his shit together and tell Laura. Adam is eating, and it’s not even a big deal. He’s the least tense that James has ever seen and talking to Ronan and it’s so small but it seems like a lot. James cries because in the last three hours he’s seen Adam more like himself than he’s ever seen him. A surge of gratefulness so strong that he feels it in his bones rushes over him, and it takes Laura on the phone with him to get himself back under control. It has been so hard. Each kid that ends up in their house is hard in their own way, but, god, how is it that it’s taken this for Adam to release from shutdown? 

When he gets back inside, they’re still hooking up a feeding bag, but half of the cup of oatmeal is gone and Adam is laughing at something Ronan had said. 

It’s barely anything. But it is something.

:: ::

“Hey, wait up a sec,” James says when Ronan and Gansey go to leave for the night. He’s also being kicked out, because there’s weigh ins and checks the night shift has to do before Adam can sleep. “Can we talk?”

“Uh, sure,” Ronan says, gives Gansey a look that tells him to leave. Gansey looks like he doesn’t want to, but he does it anyway. “What’s up?” 

“Thank you,” James says, and it clearly takes Ronan by surprise. “I’m sorry that we were initially… wary.” He takes a deep breath. “Adam clearly trusts you, and that should have been enough for us.” 

“It’s not your fault that he compartmentalizes everything,” Ronan says, puts his hands his pockets. “Sorry for being a dick, too, I guess.” 

“I was wondering if you would… it’s just that it’s the first time he’s eaten and—” James can’t seem to make the words come out right. “It would be really helpful if you…”

“You want me to join the Keep Adam Alive effort?” Ronan asks, voice dry. James nods. “Yeah, man. Of course.”

“Great,” James says. “I don’t know what we can do to get him to listen to us.”

“I mean, he’s Adam. Stubborn as fuck is his default,” Ronan offers. “I guess I just have more practice.”

“What do you mean?” James’s voice is hesitant. 

“What Gansey said before wasn’t wrong. This shit isn’t exactly new. Before, you know, before he lived with you he would be working forty hours a week on top of school and shit, and it’s not like there was food for him consistently at home.” Ronan’s voice is deliberately even. “There were just… the other issue was more pressing.” 

“How long has he been restricting, honestly?” James asks. He sounds exhausted. 

“It’s hard to tell, man. Before, like I could never tell if it was him or just because of his shitbag parents. It was better for a little bit when he first moved in with you, if it helps.” Ronan’s voice is calm. “Can I come back tomorrow morning?” 

“Don’t you have school?” James asks the question on instinct. 

Ronan Lynch just laughs. 

“See you tomorrow, James.”

:: ::

When Laura walks in the next day later than she had hoped, Ronan Lynch is sitting with his boots on Adam’s bed. They’re arguing about Latin.

She lets them be.

:: ::

“All right, Parrish,” Ronan says, as Adam finishes the cup of Ensure that he’d been given. “Now that the tube’s gone, you’re close to breaking out of here.”

“So?” Adam asks. There are deep circles under his eyes; Adam hates night weigh-ins and feedings, and even though he’s been starting to eat at least half of what he’s been given, enough to be off the nasogastric tubing, there’s still no energy. Time will pass and Adam won’t even realize it, because he doesn’t even have the energy to think most of the time.

“For one thing, I can’t pop wheelies with your wheelchair on our exciting ten minute excursions anymore,” Ronan says. “But, they’re not going to let you out of here until you make a contract.”

“A contract?” Adam sounds nervous. 

“Yeah. If you want to avoid an impatient stint somewhere, they make you write up a contract with your guardians about how to keep you alive,” Ronan says. “I almost beat the shit out of Declan when they made us do it.” 

“You had to do it?” Adam asks, wracking his memory of Ronan’s short hospital stay after the his nightmare-assisted suicide attempt. 

“They’re going to make you do it this afternoon, so you can get out of here tomorrow. Let’s talk strategy before James gets back,” Ronan says. “What do you want to be able to do?” 

“Go back to school,” Adam answers immediately. “Be able to piss without someone watching.” 

“Hmm,” Ronan says. “You realize school isn’t going to be on the table, at least not right away?”

“What do you mean? I’m stable, or whatever,” Adam answers, and Ronan can see he’s gearing up for a fight. 

“You’re no longer actively dying.” Ronan’s voice is dry. “But you’re still not eating consistently, and even then it’s mostly not solid stuff. And you’re just starting to gain some weight back. So, no. You’re not stable.” 

“Then what the fuck is the point of this?” Adam can’t help the anger in his voice. He feels slightly more human, now that there’s no IV and no tube in his nose, but his brain feels slow and everything is so hard. Sitting up is hard. Showering is an effort. 

“To keep you alive.” Ronan’s voice is honest. “It’s going to be an explicit list of what you have to do to get healthy and what you can expect to happen if you start to not do those things.” 

“Whose fucking side are you on?” Adam asks. “I just want to get caught up with work.” 

“Parrish, last week you wrote the same line ten times over in Latin. Your brain is like, not enough there to get caught up.” Ronan’s voice is blunt. “But that’s not going to be most of it.” 

“Then what is it going to be?” Adam’s voice shakes, just a little. “I feel like this shit is never going to end.”

“What you’re expected to eat and when, what happens if you don’t, that kind of shit,” Ronan says. “I’m just saying to think about the hills you’re willing to die on.” 

Adam has a frown on his face. His brain is working at like a quarter speed, can feel how much shit just isn’t computing right now. He just wants to pretend this shit never happened, but that doesn’t seem like an option. It’s like he has no autonomy anymore. 

None of the decisions about what he does are his own, anymore. Part of him doesn’t care. He’s too tired to really care. There’s a bone deep exhaustion that sleep just isn’t fixing; everyone is saying that it’s because he’s not really eating, but Adam has slept more this week than he’s ever slept and nothing can wake him up. 

He has to focus so much just to keep it together. He’s cried more in the last week than in the last two years, and it’s not even about things that matter. He’s cried because of fucking yoghurt. 

That afternoon, a doctor, nurse, James, Laura, Ronan, and Adam end up in a conference room. Adam hadn’t been able to walk there, because he’d done one of his ten minute excursions already, but Ronan had only deliberately driven Adam into a wall once along the way, so it wasn’t all shitty. 

Then it all gets really shitty, really quickly. 

The format is simple: what is expected of Adam, what is expected of James and Laura, and what they can expect to happen if Adam doesn’t follow the expectations for him. There’s, somehow, more rules than he’s had the last week in the hospital. 

He has to gain two pounds a week, has to adhere to the three meals and three snacks schedule. No locked doors, no anything until he eats, and no school, work, or exercise until he’s back to almost a normal weight. He can’t be alone for long periods of time, has to do random weigh-ins and go to all of his appointments. If he doesn’t do any of it, it gets worse: no doors, he has to literally be with James or Laura every minute, and whatever shit he’s got back goes away. And if they don’t think he’s cooperating and starts losing weight, he has to do an inpatient program.

“Why am I even here if nothing I say goes in here?” Adam says in a moment of frustration, forty minutes into the process. “I want schoolwork in there.” 

“Adam,” the doctor says, “It’s going to take a while to be stable enough to go to school.”

“The fuck does stable even mean?” Adam asks, head slumping to the table. Out of instinct, Ronan’s hand goes to Adam’s back, and he’s rubbing circles lightly and trying not to think about how he can feel every one of Adam’s vertebrae. 

“We’ve discussed this,” Laura says. “It means you’re consistently eating solid food and at a healthy weight.” 

“I don’t want to do it,” Adam says. “I don’t want to sign this.”

“If you don’t, you’re going to inpatient, man,” Ronan says. “What’s something that’s bugging the fuck out of you that isn’t there specifically to keep your ass alive?”

“I’m only allowed to, like, exist at home with James and Sarah,” Adam gets out after a moment. He’s trying to articulate that there’s no way he can see any of his friends, can see Ronan. “Like that’s it. The only way I would even see you is if you came over.” 

“Oh,” James says, “we can fix that. How about, you can chill with Ronan after he’s done in school, without one of us there, so long as you’ve eaten that day?” he offers.

It feels like one small victory in a sea of defeats.

Adam takes it.

:: ::

“Yo, Parrish,” Ronan says as he enters the house. He hadn’t gone to school, but he pretends to so that James and Laura don’t give him a lecture. Adam is still at the table, staring down a bottle of Gatorade. James is sitting on the other side of the table, watching over the top of his laptop. “Hurry up so we can chill. We’re on Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, now.”

“Not in the stars. Can’t do it, not today,” Adam gets out, but it sounds feeble. He’s been more alive the past week, Ronan thinks. The two weeks of life after the hospital haven’t been good for Adam, Ronan knows it, but they have been good. He’s not as skeletal, and he’s _eating_. Fuck, it’s not easy, because whenever it feels like Adam has adjusted to the amount of food it’s moved up a tick and then it’s starting all the fuck over in the process of getting him to eat what he needs. But it’s not just that. 

Ronan doesn’t know how Adam perceives the last month, but Ronan thinks for the first time this week that Adam is there at all. It’s hard to describe, because of course Adam is there, but his brain isn’t? Before the hospital, Ronan could barely get Adam to respond with words. It’s like nothing would get through his ears to his brain, had to ask questions five times before Adam would respond, would sit there for a minute after the parking his car before Adam would have realized they had stopped. And then the hospital. There was so much, all of the time, and everything was a convoluted game to get Adam to actively stop dying. 

“I miss the fucking feeding tube,” Adam says, after he takes a drink. There’s still so much left in the cup. “I hate Gatorade.” 

James and Ronan just look at each other for a second. 

“Oh, Jesus,” Adam says, head in his hands. “Not like that.” 

“Then like what?” James asks, and Ronan can tell by the look in Adam’s eyes he wishes he didn’t have to deal with shit. 

“Actively drinking is hard,” Adam says. “Especially when it coats my throat and makes it gross.” James opens his mouth to respond, but Adam just grabs the cup and chugs and gets up from the table before he can say anything. 

Ronan has learned that there are two effective methods for Adam: distraction and spite. Tell that bastard that he can’t do something, or make it uncomfortable in a not serious way, and Adam will do whatever it takes to get out of there as quickly as possible. Distraction is harder, because as Adam becomes more and more Adam he’s better at figuring out what’s distraction, and then, because he’s a stubborn bastard, won’t let himself be distracted. But it was the only thing that would get him to eat in the hospital; Ronan would just talk about asinine shit enough that Adam wouldn’t really register that he was eating, but not make it enough of a conversation that Adam would respond too often to actually eat much.

“Well, I guess,” Ronan says. Adam moves to go up the stairs, but James’s voice calls from the kitchen that they have to stay down here today. 

There have been such good days. Today is not going to be one of them, but there have been days when they’ll get in Ronan’s car and tear down back roads and Adam will laugh, days when Adam will read book after book with his head in Ronan’s lap, days when Ronan will push Adam around in a shopping cart in empty parking lots because Adam’s not allowed to push him around. Adam thinks there’s nothing he’s allowed to do because he isn’t clear to do much more than the bare minimum of movement, but Ronan has found things. 

“Adam,” Ronan says, leads an Adam who’s rapidly closing in on himself over to the couch. “We can watch it down here.” 

“I…” Adam starts, but Ronan’s hand squeezes his own and then they’re both on the couch. They always start on opposite ends, but on days like today, Adam will end up pressed against Ronan’s chest. If it’s just a bad day, Ronan’s hands will card through Adam’s curls, will trace freckles on his cheeks and his nose and his shoulders. If it’s a really bad day, Ronan’s grip on Adam’s hands will be firm, holding them apart so that Adam can’t pick at his arms. That’s one of the only things that has seem to have gotten worse.

Adam will sit at the kitchen table and stare down a plate of food and just pick at his arms until something gives way.

“I can hear you thinking,” Ronan says, right as Adam slots his thighs with Ronan’s and rests his head on Ronan’s chest. “What’s going on, Parrish?” 

“I just spent forty minutes staring at a protein bar and a bottle of Gatorade,” Adam says, voice oddly vacant. “And I can’t even justify it.”

“Justify what?” Ronan asks, hands playing with Adam’s fingers, doing anything to get the muscles in Adam’s back to relax. 

“In the trailer, if I didn’t eat it was because there wasn’t anything or that I would be saving it for when there wasn’t anything,” Adam admits. “But here there’s always food and I still can’t fucking eat.”

“You are, though. No one expects you to be eating six full meals a day,” Ronan says. “You’re doing your best.”

“It doesn’t feel like it.” Adam is looking at his hands, fidgeting to try to tell Ronan to let go. He doesn’t. “Every time I think I have this shit under control, they move the line.” Adam lets out one laugh. “And it’s not six meals. Three of them are snacks.” 

“Give it time,” Ronan says. “I know it all feels like a shitshow. We all know you’re trying. You’ll get there.” 

Adam just nods, and then he goes soft and if it’s going to be a napping kind of day, Ronan is happy enough to be his pillow. He would burn cities to the ground to see Adam Parrish smile, would do anything to make all of this go away. 

But there’s not a dream cure for this. 

Ronan hates not being able to actively help, not if Adam Parrish is hurting. There are things he can do, but there’s also nothing he can do. 

That scares him. It scares him worse than the memories of Adam in a hospital with a tube down his nose and wires sticking off his chest and hollow cheeks and eyes that barely stayed open. 

So Ronan just traces the knuckles on Adam’s thin hands.

:: ::

It takes two months for Adam to get back to school. But that doesn’t mean it’s over.

Adam is sitting at the kitchen table. Everyone around him is working on homework, and Adam is staring down his dinner. 

Nico is learning to multiply and divide, now. Sarah is writing a paper on atomic bombs for history, Allison is doing a worksheet on balancing chemical equations, and Adam has a mountain of schoolwork that he wants to do but he can’t. 

Allison and Sarah are being remarkably not weird about things, right now. Adam remembers when all of this had started, beneath the haze of exhaustion, that they had just stared as someone had to sit at a table with Adam to try to get him to eat something besides Ensure. 

It’s been a while since this has happened. If Adam’s going to cheat, he does it at lunch. Now, the rules aren’t so regimented as before, months of following every instruction earning back freedom inch by inch by inch. It’s probably helpful that Gansey has no reservations about tattling in any form, probably helpful that Ronan knows more about Adam’s meal plan than Adam does. 

“Can I just eat it after I do my homework?” Adam asks, looking at Laura. “Just give me an hour and I’ll be hungry then.” 

“I don’t like vegetables, either,” Nico says, and Adam lets out a deep sigh. He’s kind of glad that Nico has never really got it beyond that Adam was sick and is less sick now. 

Adam likes talking about it in the past tense. No one else does. That’s fine. 

“Adam,” Laura says. “You can finish it later if you eat something now.” 

“Or drink?” Adam bargains. The one thing that has changed is that so much that was acceptable isn’t anymore; he’s supposed to be getting his calories from solid food, but there are days when Adam just wants to drink the Ensure and get it over with. 

“Sure.” Adam practically bolts to the fridge. 

It’s only when there’s just the kids at the table, all doing homework, that anything about it is brought up again. 

“I just try to shove all the vegetables in at once so I don’t have to taste them,” Nico offers. He’s coloring now. Adam is doing chemistry. 

“That’s a good idea,” Adam responds. “Maybe I’ll try it.” 

Nico nods seriously. Adam helps Allison with chemistry, talks the ethics of atom bombs with Sarah when she says her teacher only said it was to protect America, and he gets through all of his homework and migrates to the den to hopefully avoid the trap of food that comes with staying in the kitchen, but they’re only halfway into an episode of Dancing With the Stars Juniors (a Nico pick, but Adam is willing to sit through it for the greater goal) when James calls him back into the kitchen. 

“Come on, man,” Adam says. “Not pasta. I don’t want cheese.” 

“We have other food,” James says. “Chicken and broccoli? A sandwich?” 

“I can make a sandwich,” Adam says, and James only watches a little too closely as Adam makes a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and grabs the plastic container of grapes from the fridge. 

He eats the grapes first. Adam doesn’t really like how peanut butter is sticky enough to linger in his mouth for hours, but it’s smooth and easier to think about than having to put the effort in in any other way. 

Adam goes upstairs. He has a phone, now, one of the conditions on him going back to school, and the only good thing is that Ronan will use his more often. Ronan Lynch hates texting but loves snapchat, and Adam thinks that it’s stupid but he checks his own snaps and his inbox is filled with bad pictures of Blue at Nino’s, Chainsaw trying to sit on Gansey’s head, and Ronan brushing his goddamn teeth. 

Adam lets himself exhale.

:: ::

Things go okay, for a while. He’s eating and sleeping and things feel as normal as they can. And then Adam catches the stomach flu.

:: ::

Adam wakes up in the dark, head and stomach swimming. He barely makes it to the bathroom before his knees hit the tile with a crack and he’s heaving his dinner into the toilet. His head is spreading out across the cosmos with the heat building up in his skull, and his stomach won’t stop flipping until everything has exited it.

When everything is calm enough for Adam to exhale, he just flushes the toilet, rinses his mouth out, and climbs into bed. His stomach still feels like it’s at sea, but this could be nothing. It could be food poisoning. If Laura or James knew, they would keep him home from school tomorrow, and he’s spent too much time not in school to let something as small as this stop him. 

Adam doesn’t sleep the rest of the night, not really. His head is doing lazy orbits and his stomach is swirling, enough to make him miserable and make his body is ache and be both cold and hot, but he can’t fall back asleep.

He does, however, throw up twice more. 

By the time his alarm goes off, Adam is questioning whether or not he should just tell them he’s got food poisoning or something. But he thinks that this isn’t bad. It’s nothing. 

He gets himself ready for school. Somehow, someway, Adam manages to choke down a power bar and juice and he knows he’s going to throw it up the second he’s in school, but not eating would draw a lot more attention. 

Sure enough, Adam finds himself with his knees on the floor of an Aglionby bathroom, vomiting halfway digested bits of power bar and his throat and eyes burn. He barely gets to Latin in time, and Ronan is looking at him oddly. 

“You look like shit, Parrish,” he says. “The fuck are you sick with?” 

“I’m not sick,” Adam says, winces at how his acid-coated throat makes the words rougher than they are. “It’s just warm in here.” 

“I’m pretty sure Carruthers broke the heating in here like two days ago,” Ronan shoots back. “Seriously, man. Go to the fucking nurse or something.” 

“I’m fine.” Adam’s voice is steel. 

That’s when Ronan starts swearing in Latin. 

Adam ignores him. He takes his notes, works on his translations and grammar and ignores Ronan kicking the back of his chair. Luckily, he doesn’t have another class with Ronan until the period before lunch, but it’s barely halfway through first period and the seastorm in Adam’s stomach is getting harder and harder to ignore. There’s nothing in his stomach, nothing left that he can throw up. The thought of drinking water makes Adam want to heave, but he makes a show of taking sips from his water bottle to play whatever game Ronan is insisting he engage in. 

If first period was hard, second period is impossible. His head is swimming with fever and he can feel the heat all the way in his hands and he can’t get his fingers to stop shaking enough to write good notes. 

But he makes it through. He’s halfway through period three and dreading meeting up with Ronan for calculus when his stomach flips and Adam can barely raise his hand to be excused before he’s bolting. 

By the time he’s done heaving, Adam’s knees feel too weak to stand, so he goes to sink against the wall of the stall. He knows his eyes close briefly, but when he opens them after a blink, there’s someone in front of him, tapping his face. 

“Still feeling fine, Parrish?” Ronan asks, but his voice is soft as he crouches in front of Adam. Adam blinks, can’t help but lean into Ronan’s cool hand as it feels Adam’s forehead. “Come on, let’s go.” 

“Where? ‘M in physics,” Adam slurs out, and Ronan laughs. 

“We’re halfway through calc. We’re going to the nurse,” Ronan says, heaves Adam up by his armpits and wraps an arm around Adam’s waist to keep him steady. “You good to walk, man?”

“What do you mean? I’m good,” Adam gets out, but he has a bad feeling he would not be so good if Ronan removed his arm. 

Time isn’t really a thing until they get to the nurse’s office. 

“Hey, Beth,” Ronan greets, all feral grin and teasing tone. “Adam’s been puking his guts out. Probably the flu.” 

“Oh, dear,” she says, gestures to one of the comfy chairs, and Ronan deposits Adam. The nurse, who Adam knows way too well from the days he had to eat lunch in the nurse’s office, puts a bin by Adam’s feet and rummages around in some drawers. 

“I’m texting Laura,” Ronan announces. 

“Lynch, you don’t need to—” Adam starts, but then he’s heaving bile into the bin and can’t exactly finish the sentence. 

“Hmm,” the nurse says, as she places a thermometer in Adam’s mouth and looks at his pale, sweating, and shaking form. “I’d definitely say the flu.” There’s a pause, and then the thermometer beeps. “Yes, you have a fever, Adam.”

“Nngh,” Adam says, rolls his eyes at Ronan. Ronan just shrugs. 

“Laura says she’s coming from a meeting. She’ll be here in an hour to pick him up,” he says, before he puts the phone in his pocket. 

“He can stay here. We have some beds in the back,” Beth says. “Go back to class, Mr. Lynch.” 

“I would need a hall pass for that,” Ronan says. “But I can stay until she gets here.” 

“Adam will be fine here. Go to class,” she says as she writes a hall pass. “Actually, grab Mr. Parrish’s belongings and bring them here, then go to class. I’ll be calling your next period teacher to make sure you get there.” 

Ronan curses, but he gives Adam a salute and leaves the room. 

Adam feels the exhaustion crash over him. He knows he feels terrible, and there’s nothing to fight about anymore, so he stumbles to the dark room with the cots and crashes his face into the pillow and blacks out as quickly as he can. 

He wakes up facing the wall, and there’s a hand on his back, rubbing soothing circles. Adam lets out a groan, slowly pushes himself upright. 

Laura’s concerned face is level with his own. 

“Hey,” she says, smooths a damp curl away from Adam’s forehead. “How are you feeling?”

“Nauseous,” Adam gets out, an arm wrapping protectively around his stomach. “M gonna…” The bin is already underneath Adam when he vomits water and bile into it. Laura is holding his hair back from his forehead, and when it’s done, she rubs more circles on his back. 

“Let’s get you home, okay?” she says, and Adam nods. The walk to the car is an effort, a journey. Laura has his backpack and she guides him into the passenger seat. 

He must fall asleep again, because she has to shake him awake to get him out of the car. 

“Adam,” she says, voice all soft. “Let’s get you to bed, okay?” 

Adam manages a nod, but he gets out of the car and has to wrap a hand around his stomach to try and calm the storm brewing. He lets Laura guide him into the house, but he stops at the stairs. He doesn’t think he can get up them without passing out, a feeling that sends him back to those first few days home from the hospital and the inescapable exhaustion. 

He lets out a deep sigh, and he looks at Laura for a long moment, silently begging to be able to _not_. 

“Are you going to be okay on the couch?” Laura asks. “Your bed will be more comfortable.” 

“I don’ wanna go up ’n down,” Adam explains. 

“You wouldn’t have to,” Laura says. “I’ll be right behind you.” That, somehow, helps. He almost believes that they’re not going to make him make the trek to the kitchen to eat however many times a day. Adam steels himself and only almost falls down the stairs three times, and then he gets to curl up on his bed. Laura draws the blinds, gets a trash bin by the bed, and gets Adam sweatpants and a threadbare t-shirt. When she comes back in the room, Adam is curled up in a tight ball, hands around his stomach. 

“I have some water and some medicine,” she says. “Think you can stomach it?” 

“Probably not,” Adam says, but he sits up and swallows it down with a grimace. He immediately flops back down. 

“Okay. I’m just going to be doing work in the office. Yell if you need something, but I’ll check in in an hour so,” she says, a hand resting against Adam’s forehead. 

He’s asleep before she closes his door.

:: ::

Adam wakes up slowly, this time. He feels the bed dip behind his back, and then there’s a hand on his shoulder and Adam knows his eyes should open. But his stomach is almost jumping into his throat, and Adam knows if he sits up he’s going to vomit.

“Hey,” a soft voice says, James this time. His hand is gentle on Adam’s shoulder, and Adam groans out a response. He does scrunch up tighter. “Think you could drink something?” 

Adam just shakes his head. If he just lays still enough, if he just falls back asleep, he won’t have to throw up again. 

But that’s not an option. Adam pulls himself up, has to breathe through his nose and swallow the nausea down, down, down. 

It doesn’t work. 

Without saying anything, Adam is running to the bathroom, is vomiting water and probably medicine into the toilet bowl. James’s is holding Adam’s hair back from his sweaty forehead, and then there’s one hand on Adam’s back as the spurts of bile turn to dry heaving. 

When it’s over, Adam leans back against the bathtub, head arching back and hands on his knees. He’s trying to breathe through his nose, to keep from dry heaving again, and when Adam blinks his eyes open James is in front of him. He’s got the scan thermometer in one hand, and he slowly smooths the hair back off of Adam’s forehead and moves it close. Adam winces at the beep, and James tsks. 

“Your fever is pretty high,” he says. “And it’s still too early for more medicine.” 

Adam just shrugs. “It’s fine. My legs are wobbly.” As if to prove a point, Adam tries to stand, and his legs go weak and he’s pretty sure he would have brained himself on the counter if James hadn’t managed to catch Adam by the armpits. 

“Okay,” James says. “Let’s rinse your mouth out before you go back to bed.” 

Adam manages to rinse and spit, and then he wanders back to his bed. James is careful to guide the stumbling as minimally as possible, but as soon as Adam makes it onto the bed he moves the covers and gets a cold wash cloth and sits on the bed next to Adam.

“You need to drink something,” James says. “I’ve got water and flat sprite.” 

“Don’t want to throw up,” Adam gets out.

“It’s going to hurt more if you don’t,” James says. “And you don’t want to dehydrate.” 

It takes Adam fifteen minutes to drink half a glass of flat sprite and eat a quarter of a piece of dry toast, but it satisfies James and then Adam curls back up into a ball. James places the cold washcloth on Adam’s head, but frowns when Adam’s hands wrap around his stomach. 

“Are you cramping?” he asks, and Adam manages a small nod. “Give me one second.” 

Adam is already half asleep when hands are pulling his own arms away from his stomach. Gently, something warm is placed there instead, and Adam feels tension melt from his shoulders and his back and stomach and Adam hugs it tightly to himself. 

“That helping?” James asks, and Adam nods. “Okay. Are you tired?” 

“Yeah,” Adam gets out. “Thanks, James.” 

And then James goes to leave, goes to close the door. Adam doesn’t know if it’s the fever or the headache or whatever the fuck else is wrecking his body, but he’s suddenly eight-years-old and his dad has locked him in the bathroom because they can’t afford it if he or Adam’s mom gets sick. Three days and Adam is pretty sure he’s only alive because he had remembered to drink water from the sink. 

All Adam knows is the door can’t close. He can’t do it again.

“Wait,” Adam slurs out, sits up and winces at how everything aches. “Don’t.” 

“Don’t close the door?” James looks confused. Adam has literally never left his door open unless he hadn’t been allowed to close it. “The rest of them are going to be getting home, so it might get loud.” 

“No,” Adam pleads, has to blink fever tears from his eyes. “I can’t. They used to… when I was sick, they’d lock me in the bathroom.” This is the first time, really, that Adam has specifically mentioned his parents to James. To any of them. James sits back down on the bed.

“It’s okay, I’ll leave it open,” he promises. “Are you going to be okay?” 

Adam has laid back down, but he’s still tense and James doesn’t know if Adam wants to be alone or if that’s absolutely not what he wants. 

So James stays.

:: ::

Adam spends forty-eight hours puking his guts out and another day and a half sleeping before he feels like a person again.

His appetite hasn’t returned, but that’s normal. No one is forcing him to eat unless he wants to, because Adam is pretty sure his stomach has shrunk at least two sizes from the shitstorm of the stomach flu. It’s fine. It’s normal. 

Right?

It’s going to come back. Adam isn’t sick anymore. He’ll want to eat again soon. It just needs more time.

:: ::

“Adam, I don’t have a pencil,” Ronan says, about two weeks later. They’re early to Latin, just Gansey and Ronan and Adam in the classroom.

It has gotten better, but not a lot. Snacks are piling up in his backpack. He eats most of his dinner, but it’s like eating sand. He doesn’t want to do it. It would be so easy to not do it. 

He’s got his appointment with the dietician tomorrow. Adam knows it’s not going to go well. 

But he forgets all of this when he answers Ronan. “In my bag,” he says absentmindedly, and it isn’t until Ronan is looking at no less than ten power bars and bags of trail mix that Adam’s heart drops in his chest. “Oh, shit.”

“Adam,” Ronan starts, all serious. “How long?” No bullshit. No asking what or how or why. 

“It’s not a big deal,” Adam says, but he feels the anxiety twisting in his gut. It’s been there all week. He knows that this is a problem, but he doesn’t want it to be. 

“How long, Parrish?” Ronan asks again. “At least a week.”

“Since I got sick,” Adam says, voice small. “I promise it’s not as bad as it looks. It’s getting better, I swear.” 

“What else have you been hiding?” Ronan asks, all sharp edges. 

“This is all of it.” And it is. But it does nothing to explain how the itching beneath his skin has begun again, does nothing to explain that the longer this goes the less he wants to fix it. It’s not that it feels good, or whatever, but more like it’s easier to shutdown. 

It would be so easy to just let it go. 

This all feels like a beginning to Adam. And he’s suddenly more scared than he was five minutes before. It feels like all of this, all of him, is one of those functions in calculus that’s normal and smooth and good until suddenly it’s not. One slip up, and he goes shooting off towards infinity. 

Is it possible to step backwards?

:: ::

“Can I… can I talk to you?” Adam asks, when he gets home after school. James and Laura are both sitting at the kitchen table, almost like they were waiting. He doesn’t know what Ronan has told James and Laura, if he’s told them anything at all. “Please.”

Adam doesn’t want to say anything. He has to say something. 

“Of course,” James says, gestures to the spot across from them. “What’s up?” 

“I, uh,” Adam starts, twisting his fingers together and apart, together and apart. “I’ve, um, I’ve been—” Adam allows himself one struggling breath. “I don’t think I’m okay?”

“Adam,” Laura says, voice soft. “What’s going on?”

“I’ve been struggling, with eating and stuff,” Adam gets out. “Not like before, but it’s not. It’s not good.”

“Thank you for telling us,” James says, all honest. “What’s been going on?”

Adam knows there’s so much more they have to talk about. He knows he’s going to have to explain this, going to have to take a step backwards, and maybe another, and that it already feels like he’s ripped open an old wound to find that it never had healed at all. Adam is going to lose some independence, some freedom. God, he hopes it helps. He wants to believe that it can get better again. They were there, when Adam didn’t want them to be, and they were there to watch Adam claw himself back up to himself, to offer footholds and haul him up and just… maybe they can again. 

If he asks for it. He knows they will. Why is it so hard to say the words, then?

“I don’t know,” Adam gets out. It scrapes through his throat, drags scratches all the way from the bottom of his lungs to the tip of his tongue. “I don’t know.” 

“Okay,” Laura says, reaches a hand across the table, covers both of Adam’s with one of her own. 

Okay. It’s going to be okay. No, it’s going to be something. Adam can’t know that it will be okay. 

“How can we help?” 

Adam gives himself one shaky breath, just one second to bite his lip hard to summon all of his bravery to that point of pain. 

Then he speaks.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sometimes, shit gets real, and it's hard for it to get better. pls pls pls tell me what you think lol idk why this fic is so important to me i just want my sweet summer child to deal with things.
> 
> (also pray for my soul in orgo)

**Author's Note:**

> I promise it starts to get better from here. The whole deal is adam learning how to deal with things, but I think adam wouldn't learn to deal with his shit until he can't ignore it any longer. 
> 
> Please let at me here or @thoseunheard on tumblr.


End file.
